The present disclosure relates to a cleaning device which removes a toner from an image carrier and an image forming apparatus including the cleaning device.
In an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine and a printer, an electrostatic latent image formed on a photosensitive drum is developed into a toner image, the toner image is transferred via an intermediate transferring body or directly on a recording medium and then fixed on the recording medium. The toner remained on the photosensitive drum after the toner image is transferred on the recording medium is removed by a cleaning device. The cleaning device includes a toner removing member and a conveying screw. The toner removing member comes into contact with the photosensitive drum and removes the residual toner from a surface of the photosensitive drum. The conveying screw conveys the removed residual toner (a waste toner) to a waste toner container or the like.
In such a cleaning device, depending on an surrounding environment (temperature, humidity or the others), the waste toner firmly adheres on a circumferential face of a rotating shaft of the conveying screw. This causes increasing in the diameter of the rotating shaft and reduces a conveying ability of the conveying screw. Especially, because of its low flowability, the waste toner tends to accumulate on the circumferential face of the rotating shaft.